Conventionally, there have been several methods available for cleaning a substrate such as a semiconductor wafer (simply noted as “wafer” hereinafter). Examples of these methods include a spin cleaning method in which a cleaning fluid is applied to a substrate by rotating the substrate, and a cleaning method in which a substrate itself is immersed in a cleaning fluid.
In the spin cleaning method, a cleaning fluid is dropped approximately at the center of the surface of a substrate, the fluid is spread on the surface by rotating the substrate, and the fluid is shaken off the substrate by the centrifugal force of the rotating substrate and into a recovery box placed outside of the substrate, and thereby the substrate is cleaned.
When dust attached to a substrate is to be cleaned off, pure water is used as the cleaning fluid to wash away the dust via a current of the pure water.
If an adhesive used in the previous process is left on the substrate, a solution such as alcohol is used as the cleaning fluid and the adhesive is removed by dissolving it.
In particular, in a process for thinning a wafer, a contamination generated during the grinding/polishing process of the wafer (simply noted as “contamination” or “contaminant” hereinafter) is cleaned by water cleaning, while an adhesive left after releasing the support plate used for supporting the wafer is removed by a cleaning method using a solution.
In the above described cleaning process using the solution, the ground surface of a wafer has, in most cases, a dicing tape attached to it that is used in a later process. Consequently, in the cleaning process, it is already confirmed that applying a spin method using the solution actually deteriorates the dicing tape.
Meanwhile, there is an example of applying a similar mechanism to the above described spin cleaning method to a development apparatus. That is, in a development apparatus applying a photoresist to a substrate, transferring a circuit pattern to the photoresist by using a photolithography technique, and developing a coated resist film by supplying a latent pattern-formed surface with a developing fluid, a spin method is employed as a mechanism for supplying the photoresist with the developing fluid (refer to reference patent document 1).
In the above described spin cleaning method, the entirety of the supplied cleaning fluid can be applied to the substrate more securely than in a cleaning method in which the substrate itself is immersed in the cleaning fluid because the cleaning fluid is applied to a substrate by rotating the substrate and it is shaken off into a recovery box by the centrifugal force of the rotation.    [Reference patent document 1] Laid-Open Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-274028, paragraphs [0002] and [0003]